Titleist Splashes Colour Into Pro V1

Rick Young

Rick Young

Bubba Watson put Titleist’s new Pro V1x into play at the Waste Management Phoenix Open Thursday.

The two-time Masters champion is renowned for being a quick adopter of new product with all of his endorsers so this kind of validation of a new Titleist golf ball is not a surprise.

Far more eye-opening, and eye-catching quite frankly, is the colour. Watson’s shiny new Pro V1x is high optic yellow.

Unveiled by longtime Titleist brand ambassadors Brad Faxon and Butch Harmon on the opening day of last week’s PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Fla., the 2019 iterations of the Titleist franchise offer refinements for added speed, and by extension, more distance, while maintaining its high standard for short game performance.

But the unexpected sidebar for this next generation of Titleist’s flagship Pro V1/Pro V1x was the provision for yellow.

While the reaction among those gathered for the launch last Wednesday was one of surprise, bordering on shock for some, Titleist maintains that it is merely listening to the people who matter most.

“Golfers have been asking for it,” said Mike Mahoney, vice-president of Titleist golf ball marketing in an interview. “Six or seven years ago you saw a pop of colour hit the market, which actually precipitated the launch of our yellow version of the NXT Tour. At the time in the United States and Canada, colour products represented six or seven per cent of the market and that number over the years has grown to the mid-teens in the U.S. and only slightly lower across Canada. We had more performance-driven players wanting yellow so Titleist did what it always does: we delivered.”

Whether someone is a purist who prefers traditional white in their three-piece Pro V1 or four-piece Pro V1x or a golfer who favours the visual enhancement high optic yellow provides, both new Titleists have the same updated innovations.

The R&D team in Fairhaven, Mass., introduced a faster ionomeric casing layer promoting increased ball speed and lower long game spin. On Pro V1, that casing later has been thickened 14 per cent and 11 per cent on Pro V1x. The casing layer works in tandem with a new 17 per cent thinner Urethane Elastomer cover system, adding more potential ball speed while retaining the product’s Drop-and-Stop greenside control and soft feel.

Titleist has also given both models a new 2.0 ZG Process Core. This new formulation for the solid core Pro V1 and dual core Pro V1x helps increase core stiffness but still maintain their soft responsive centres for what the company calls, “a faster engine.”

“Through the prototyping process, our chemists and engineers discovered a way to cast an even thinner urethane cover, and therefore increase the percentage of speed-enhancing materials in the overall construction,” Mahoney said. “Pro V1 and Pro V1x are now even faster while maintaining the scoring performance and feel characteristics golfers demand from these golf balls.”

Charles Howell III was the first player to win with the 2019 version of the Pro V1. After an 11-year hiatus from the winner’s circle the Augusta, Ga., native won the RSM Classic in a sudden-death playoff. He had just switched out of the 2017 Pro V1x to the 2019 Pro V1 that week.

“This new Pro V1 feels softer to me around the greens, which I prefer,” Howell III said in a release. “Ball speed off the driver is a pretty hard and fast measurable whereas touch and feel around the green is player dependent. I go through a fairly rigorous testing process when it comes to new equipment but it did not take long for me to put this ball into play.”

More than 200 tour players have put the new Pro V1 or Pro V1x into play. Among them are Jimmy Walker, Billy Horschel, Matt Wallace, Charley Hoffman, Ian Poulter and, of course, Watson, who re-signed with Titleist after an ill-advised, trainwreck few months playing Volvik in 2017-18.

Since the company’s tour seeding and validation process began in October, Pro V1 and Pro V1x 2019 have a combined six wins across five professional tours.

Watson is the first Titleist staff or non-staff player to use high optic yellow on tour, which will be available in golf shops worldwide starting March 15.

“It’s not as simple as mixing a little dye into the formulation to come up with a new colour,” Mahoney said. “Might seem that way but for the team to recreate the exact properties of those products in yellow required a new and pretty complex chemistry with considerable iteration until we got it just right.”

Reaction on social media and in chat rooms to the new colour has been mixed. In my opinion, it received the kind of response one might typically expect from golfers over-caffeinated on passion 24/7.

But high optic yellow also speaks volumes to Titleist’s reliability on feedback, not only from its tour staff but from consumers through its Team Titleist activation. Mahoney believes it is still the pillar of the Titleist golf ball division and one of the key reasons for the company’s continued category dominance.

“One of the things that stands out working here is there are two paths you can take when you have a position in the market like we do in golf balls,” he said. “You can play defence and protect your lead or you can be on offence. Both of those strategies have merit but culturally from the top down we’re always on offence her. We continue to innovate, continue to invest in R&D every day. Whether they’re white or the high optic yellow you’re seeing the endgame of that with these new Pro V1 and Pro V1x models.”